Discursive Possession: Ethiopian Discourse in Medieval European and Eighteenth-century English Literature

by Wendy Laura Belcher

This dissertation updates current models of cultural encounter, which tend to venerate European agency, by demonstrating that Europe's others co-constituted European representations. I argue that African thought shaped important European discussions and canonical texts, including the work of that most English of authors, Samuel Johnson. I explore a specific case of unacknowledged African intellectual contributions: the circulation in Europe of the discourse of the highland Ethiopian Christians called the Habesha. To discuss this circulation, I posit a theory of discursive possession. By decentering Enlightenment conceptions of authorship, spiritual possession is a valuable metaphor that can help us to portray how discourses and identities circulate across boundaries. It also enables us to read some European texts ordinarily classified as orientalist texts as exhibiting aspects of African thought. They are culturally heterogeneous, constructed through the mediated agency of their European authors.;The first part of the dissertation, chapters one through six, is devoted to the almost invisible history of Habesha discourse in Europe before the eighteenth century. The first chapter details the circulation of Habesha self-representations in the ancient world. The next three chapters describe the development of the Habesha medieval epic Kebra Nagast and how its legend of a virtuous and African Queen of Sheba shaped early European legends about her, including the medieval German epic Parzival. The sixth chapter illustrates how the Habesha shaped the legend of a Christian king in the East, Prester John.;The second part of the dissertation, chapters 7 through 11, is devoted to some examples of eighteenth-century discursive possession. As his first professional work, Johnson translated a palimpsest account of the Habesha, The Voyage to Abyssinia (1735). This foreign body permanently marked Johnson, leaving traces of its presence in the forms of Habesha names, places, and discourse in Johnson's tragedy Irene, "The Vision of Theodore," the nine oriental tales in The Rambler and The Idler, and his famous fiction The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. I argue that each is an energumen, a text through which others speak. The surprising return of Rasselas to Ethiopia concludes this exploration of the global construction of the canon.

581 pages, ebook

About the author

Professor Wendy Laura Belcher is an associate professor of African literature with a joint appointment in the Princeton University Department of Comparative Literature and the Center for African American Studies. Working at the intersection of diaspora, postcolonial, and eighteenth-century studies, she has a special interest in the literatures of Ethiopia and Ghana and a multi-book comparative project demonstrating how African thought has animated British and European canonical literature. This includes the widely reviewed book that was a finalist for the Bethwell A. Ogot Award for best book on East Africa: Abyssinia’s Samuel Johnson: Ethiopian Thought in the Making of an English Author (Oxford, May 2012), which theorizes the discursive possession of English authors and texts. The next part of the project is in progress, a book titled The Black Queen of Sheba: A Global History of an African Idea, about the circulation of Ethiopian thought in Europe from 1000 to 2000.

(from https://complit.princeton.edu/people/...)